This is digressing a bit, but I too have read the various "studies" (mostly in the USA) about how long non-instrument pilots take to die in IMC. I read with incredulity about how fast pilots with 2000 hours TT lose control the moment they enter IMC. They must have spent their entire life flying circuits in Arizona! As someone who started instrument training very early on, I just don't get this; getting enough training to be able to fly a heading in IMC is no rocket science; you can teach someone to do it adequately in an hour or two. Once, I had a passenger friend who never flew a plane before, doing that much after about 10 mins' training. The other 98% of instrument flight training is all the procedures, doing a heavy radio workload at the same time, partial panel, etc. but you don't need to know that stuff to stop yourself getting killed. Unfortunately, PPL training does just the 180 in IMC and everywhere we are told to be !!!!! scared. I think this is counterproductive, but I suppose that the moment they expanded IMC training within the PPL some traditionalist old fart will stand up and say the stuff should not be taught unless it is taught "properly"....
Back to autopilots, it's an unfortunate fact that post people reading this will have only ever seen ones that (at best) are placarded INOP and (at worst) are duff and go out of control as soon as you switch them on. They are expensive bits of kit and the first thing most renting establishments do when they get a problem is to pull the circuit breaker and forget about it. "The plane is for VFR training after all". In my 2 years of training/renting I saw a number of autopilots and not one of them worked. Keeping a plane with decent avionics, all working, is a serious financial commitment.